AWKWARD ZOMBIE

The thing is, you don't have to believe that otherkin are actually animals. I mean, I don't necessarily believe that's the literal definition. Maybe it is something spiritual, and maybe it actually is something in their heads. I don't know. But what I do know is that I respect their belief and support them when they receive ridicule and abuse for it.

Why is that such a leap from not believing in a god, but respecting somebody who does?

And yes, I would call it oppression when almost bodaciously everybody you tell that you are otherkin believes that you are crazy and need professional help to deal with it.

Lambeth, there is a difference. Somebody can be otherkin, upstanding member of society, both, or neither.

Unbalanced wrote:How is it harmful? Otherkin are completely aware of the fact that they are in human bodies and have obligations in a human society that they are expected to follow.

Why shouldn't I tell somebody who is gay or believes in a god to seek professional help then?

First off, there is quite a fundamental difference between gender, sexual attraction and species.

Second of all, I didn't say it was necessarily harmful. It can be harmful when said person starts behaving like a member of the species in question for example. There might also be other psychological complications like depression from the idea of being trapped in the wrong body. One also needs to take into account that a delusion can grow/evolve when left unchecked. This is of course all dependent on the person in question and I have no doubt that there are otherkin who are pop flyin' and integrated into society. I'm just saying that professional help might be something to consider in that situation.

I am of course in no way, shape or form condoning the ridicule of any person for whatever reason.

Unbalanced wrote:Lambeth, there is a difference. Somebody can be otherkin, upstanding member of society, both, or neither.

Yeah that's what I thought.

Anyway, belief in god simply has more tradition in our sometimes homogeneous western society, which is why it is more accepted. I honestly don't care. Otherkin seems really silly to me but there are more harmful ideas out there.

edit: I retain the right to make fun of upstanding members of society and otherkin if they are exceptionally silly. Don't worry I can do the same to people who believe in god.

For a shining example of how great otherkin are, try out watchful-entity. A warning: watching for too long may be hazardous to your health.

and that is all i will say on the matter anymore. I was done with this before I even began.

Game Angel wrote:For a shining example of how great otherkin are, try out watchful-entity. A warning: watching for too long may be hazardous to your health.

For a shining example of how great Christians are, try seeing all the bible-thumping, homophobic, pro-life ones.

Oh wait, that's right, singling out individuals of a group as a representation of the entire group is wrong. Sorry, my bad.

Man those aren't even the worst Christians.

I'll try to weigh in on this.

Many groups try to find legitimacy for their actual and perceived problems (especially with coming to terms with identity) through believable sources. Hundreds of years ago, the believable source was often either some form of philosomysticism (the east and the Americas) or the Abrahamic religions (the known west), through which everything was judged. Things were heralded or decried depending on the judgement, which could change over time (look at things like divorce).

Nowadays, we look to biology and science in general to explain and "rule" on these things, to provide legitimacy for things that maybe we would have thought were the inane ramblings of people back then. This has led to an understanding of mental health disorders and a lot of other things like homosexuality and trans* issues. It's easy to say that the difference now is that back then, people relied on "belief" over "scientific fact". You aren't born Christian, but you might be born gay, trans*, or anything else. Similarly, since there doesn't seem to be much scientific support for otherkin at this time, it's easy to say that otherkins "believe" they have this problem, but it's not real. They're just subscribing to the belief of being an animal inside a human, just the same as other people believe in angels, Satan, God, and hell.

But, as Turbo said, there's been a time where other groups--different races, genders, gays, and trans* individuals especially--were not considered scientifically (Or psuedoscientifically in the early 20th century) backed. Blacks didn't have as much brain function as whites and couldn't do math. Women didn't have the capacity to make the difficult decisions that voting required. Gays were deranged men that were coddled by mommy and couldn't attract girls (and lesbians were just doing it as an act to get attention). All of these things had answers that, at the time, was the most "informed" opinion to have because there was nothing more legitimate to back up the other side. The groups had to deal with the fact that there was nothing much more than their word to explain how this wasn't the case because the "truth" just didn't agree with them. Then, we have studies that legitimize the groups, giving scientific possibilities and potential proof that these people aren't just delusional or sick, and at the very least, it's POSSIBLE that at least some of them have a physical/biological/whatever link that might definitively prove what they've been saying.

So it's a bit ironic, the very thing that helped oppress them, the thing they fought for years, becomes the thing they cling to as proof of legitimacy, and perhaps what they in turn expect other groups to have.

That isn't to say that people should just blindly believe in trollkin and galaxykin, or the people who think their headmates are the entire cast and crew of The Breakfast Club, but at the very least, there's a nasty little pattern of this happening, and it's a bit of a dilemma.

To add to it, let's consider something else.

Say, in the future, there's a device that can scan someone and determine, scientifically (or at the then-present level of scientific understanding), what their identity is. Maybe it can't be used until they're a teenager for accuracy purposes, but it's supposed to say definitively what someone is. Ignoring the potential to use it for malicious purposes (parents wanting to find out if their kid is), let's say we scan a kid who says he's gay and the device says, scientifically, he's really straight.

What would we do?

On the one hand, it's not impossible for someone to pretend to be something they're not. We all know people who have claimed to be something and then later went back on that (sometimes it happens in the quest to find yourself, and it's no fault of the person) and it's easy to say that there are probably a good number of people who are "faking" something we don't exactly believe in. This kid could just want to be gay (maybe even a subconscious-like yearning), or feels some kind of pressure to be gay, maybe because he's boring, all of his friends have something unique about them, and he's just plain ol' straight guy.

Or maybe, he's actually gay (or at the very least, is completely convinced he's gay with no ulterior motive), his family doesn't believe it because they "would have seen the signs", or maybe he had a girlfriend a couple of years ago, or whatever, and he's come to get this test to finally get definitive proof of what he's been saying.

Is this device needed in society? Do we need a way to "prove" what people are saying about their own personal identity through the lens of something like science (which is always a work in progress and nowhere near infallible), and even if we have proof that at the very least explains a part of the people experiencing it, does it delegitimize the individuals that don't experience it? Can we, or SHOULD we look at something like brain shape, hormones, development, etc. as the benchmark of whether someone is what they believe they are?

To me, it's always bothered me that the gay community seems wholly opposed to the idea that being gay can be caused by something other than cold hard genetics or embryonic hormone fluctuations. It's understandable because it's the thing that finally made them distinct from the crazies in the madhouse, but to close out the possibility of things like subconscious decision making, or really anything else seems very cold and inclusive for a group fighting for equality.

I'm the first one to say that science is a wonderful tool that makes us so much more knowledgeable and fulfilled than we would be without, but I think in things like identity and society, people invest too much interest in proof or validation to allow people to be who they are or even who they want to be.

So, is otherkinism a legitimate thing? A belief? Some weird mix of the two? Ultimately, it may not really matter.

All the same though, I'm still on the fence a bit over Otherkins. I believe, at the very least, that they deserve the respect to be called what they want, but the issues that crop up with legitimacy involves finding solutions to conflicts that arise, such as acceptable behavior, obligations, and instincts. It can be very easy for someone to exploit the sympathy of society and the law and ruin it for everyone else, and that's where the majority of the problems are going to be. That's why upstanding members of society have had such a raw deal as of late, whether people feel it's deserved or not, and I'm not sure how this might turn out in the future.

Hopefully I've addressed everything properly and haven't made a fool out of myself.

Unbalanced wrote:

Game Angel wrote:For a shining example of how great otherkin are, try out watchful-entity. A warning: watching for too long may be hazardous to your health.

For a shining example of how great Christians are, try seeing all the bible-thumping, homophobic, pro-life ones.

Oh wait, that's right, singling out individuals of a group as a representation of the entire group is wrong. Sorry, my bad.

you are generalizing and being disrespectful

Problem is, there has to be a line somewhere. Pointing at the suffering of minorities in the past and going "See, this is totally whats happening to us" when your own subculture simply isnt the same thing does nothing except make the people in actual disenfranchised groups despise you. Not every single fringe group should be given the benefit of the doubt, and Im sorry, but beliving that you are something other than human is not a healthy outlook on life. At some point, you have to draw the line between "alternate lifestyle" and mental illness, and when you say youre a cat in a human body, Id say thats clear across the line.

The line was drawn repeatedly in the past to exclude groups, and the argument against moving the line often had to do with "allowing this will eventually lead to allowing that".

Keep in mind, these opinions, arguments, and histories are cyclic (or seemingly cyclic) for a reason. They make sense within the context of society at the time, but not necessarily for the right reason.

The only way otherkins damage the credibility of other groups like homosexuals and trans* individuals is when uninformed people draw direct comparisons between the groups (that otherkin kid thinks he's a dog, so the rest of these people must be insane too!). That's not (generally) a problem caused by the otherkin individuals, that's a problem with ignorant generalization, which will be there as long as there are detractors to pretty much any group (notice how almost every "bad" group in society in the past has been connected in the past to harming/molesting children?).

There's nothing wrong with otherkins wanting some form of respect or legitimacy.

See my large post though, Malum.

But its not a matter of sexual identity or gender issues or anything that has any remote correspondence to reality at all, it is bodaciously just some people who likes to think that theyre secretly another species. That isnt grounds for legitimacy, thats grounds for psychiatric help. Im not calling for them to be ostracized from society, Im saying that this kind of thinking shouldnt be encouraged. There is a limit to where soemones behavior is a psychological problem and not just being different.

I don't think the comparison to gay people and other minorities really works. Otherkin simply haven't had the same centuries of oppression and bigotry against them.

Maybe this attitude(of mine, but I imagine other people hold it) will change in the future but I don't know.

TheStranger wrote: beliving that you are something other than human is not a healthy outlook on life. At some point, you have to draw the line between "alternate lifestyle" and mental illness, and when you say youre a cat in a human body, Id say thats clear across the line.

I'd have to agree, there has to be a line drawn SOMEWHERE. And it's not okay, you aren't going to be a purple polkadotted catdog no matter how many times you say it, or how hard you believe it. You're not a vampire or an anthro-squirrel or a hobbit. If you honestly believe you are, it's kinda crossing the point of being "mentally unwell".

Malum wrote:Well the difference is there's actually psychological and biological evidence that transgender people actually exist and are legitimate.
There's a huge difference between "my biological sex is not the same as my psychological one" and "I'm an anthropomorphic dragon trapped in a human's body"

Exactly this.

Implying that Otherkinism is even -remotely- similar to being gay or being transgender is offensive and delegitimizing to homosexuals and transgender people.

Being an "Otherkin" is a way of deluding oneself and can often end up being harmful to the person emotionally and should not be encouraged. That being said, as easy as it is to simply "hate" all otherkin, usually they are people who have had serious issues in their life (likely in some way related to self-esteem) and probably need help more than anything.

This tumblr here explains all of this far better than I ever could: http://melted-snowflake.tumblr.com/